He has compassion on our condition.
Psalm 103:10-14

About ten years ago, I experienced one of the darkest and most trying seasons of my life. When I prayed to the Lord, I asked him out loud, “Where are you? Do you see me? Do you know what is happening in my life?” His seeming absence terrified me. His apparent silence to my questions while in prayer shook me to the core. This is not unlike the response that I’m seeing today in our world and in our nation due to the COVID-19 pandemic. Many in our nation and around the world are asking the same questions I did over a decade ago: “Where is God in this? Does he see and know what’s going on?”

When we look into God’s word, we hear him answer a resounding yes to those questions. Here is what God’s word says in Psalm 103:13-14: “As a father shows compassion to his children, so the Lord shows compassion to those who fear him. For he knows our frame; he remembers that we are dust.” These two verses teach us two things: 1) the Lord is our Father who has compassion on us, his children; 2) he knows our condition. Therefore, he doesn’t deal with us according to our sins (Psalm 103:10). He has placed the greatest distance between himself and our sins that we could ever imagine (Psalm 103:11-12). Because the Lord is our loving and compassionate Father who knows our condition, what does this mean for you and me?

For one thing, these words in Psalm 103:13-14 are very similar to what Jesus taught the crowds during the Sermon on the Mount when he exhorted them not to worry about food and clothes because “…your Heavenly Father knows you need them all” (Matthew 6:32). Earlier in the same chapter, Jesus also told the crowds that their “Father knows what you need before you ask him” (Matthew 6:8). Our Heavenly Father sees and knows our condition. He knows that we’re from the dust of the earth (Genesis 2:7). He knows we are frail due to sin (Genesis 3:16-19). That is why he sent his Son to redeem us from the curse of sin and death. This was his greatest act of compassion for us. Where is God today? He is with us and in us by the Holy Spirit.